Saturday, October 15, 2011

Residents in a southside neighborhood were evacuated Friday night while the Tucson Police Department bomb squad investigated a suspicious package found in a mobile home.

Officers were called to a trailer court in the 5900 block of South Stewart Boulevard just before 9 p.m. after receiving a report of shots being fired at one of the trailers.

Officers found shell casings outside the home, said Sgt. Matt Ronstadt, a TPD spokesman. Inside they found about 25 undocumented immigrants. No gunshot victims were found, but during a search of the premises, officers discovered a suspicious package and the bomb squad was called in. They remained on-site into the early morning hours. Agents from the U.S. Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement joined the investigation.

About seven homes in the area were evacuated and SunTran brought in a bus where the displaced residents could wait out the investigation.

Bomb squad personnel determined the object to be a mock explosive device and destroyed the package, Ronstadt said in a news release.

Border Patrol and ICE interviewed the immigrants at the scene before taking them to a federal facility for further processing.

Tucson police detectived determined that there was a fight between a group of people outside of the home before the shots were fired.

Detectives were still trying to figure out if the group was affiliated with the mobile home.